致用英语综合教程第二版课文翻译unit8

致用英语综合教程第二版课文翻译unit8

1Like any out-of-the-way place, the Napo River in the

Ecuadorian jungle seems real enough when you are there,

even central. Out of the way of what? I was sitting on a

stump at the edge of a bankside palm-thatch village, in the

middle of the night, on the headwaters of the Amazon. Out

of the way of human life, tenderness, or the glance of

heaven?

如同所有僻远之地，当你身临其境时，厄瓜多尔丛林深处的纳波河就显得那么真实，甚至有中心要地的感觉。那么僻远之地远离什么呢？夜半时分，在亚马逊河的源头，我坐在一个树墩上，身后是傍水的棕榈叶作屋顶的小村落。远离人类活动，远离脉脉温情。或者说远离天堂的扫视？

2A nightjar in deep-leaved shadow called three long

notes, and hushed. The men with me talked softly: three

North Americans, four Ecuadorians who were showing us the

jungle. We were holding cool drinks and idly watching a

hand-sized tarantula seize moths that came to the lone bulb

on the generator shed beside us.

一只欧夜鹰在密密的树叶间发出三声长啼，旋即静默无声。和我一起的那些男人轻声交谈着：3个北美人，4个为我们在丛林中带路的厄瓜多尔人。我们手里拿着清凉的饮料，悠闲地看着一只有手

那么大小的狼蛛捕捉纷纷扑向我们身旁发电机棚屋上一个灯泡的飞虫。

3 It was February, the middle of summer. Green

fireflies spattered lights across the air and illumined for

seconds, now here, now there, the pale trunks of enormous,

solitary trees. Beneath us the brown Napo River was rising,

in all silence; it coiled up the sandy bank and tangled its

foam in vines that trailed from the forest and roots that

looped the shore.

时值2月，正当仲夏。绿莹莹的萤火虫在空中闪出光亮，一会儿这里照亮一下，一会儿那里照亮一下幽木巨树的暗淡的树干。在我们下方，褐黄色的纳波河水正在涨潮。万籁俱寂：惟见河水沿着沙岸蜿蜒流过，水沫裹挟在蔓生在森林里的藤蔓间以及盘绕岸边的树根上。

4 Each breath of night smelled sweet. Each star in

Orion seemed to tremble and stir with my breath. All at

once, in the thatch house across the clearing behind us

came the sound of a recorder, playing a tune that twined

over the village clearing, muted our talk on the bankside,

and wandered over the river, dissolving downstream.

晚吸入的每口气都沁人心脾。猎户星座里的每一颗星星似乎都因了我的呼吸而颤动。突然，我们身后空地旁的茅屋里，传出了录

音机的声音，一首乐曲在村子空地之上缭绕，减弱了我们在河畔谈话的声音，然后又传至河面，随流飘去。

5This will do, I thought. This will do, for a weekend,

or a season, or a home.

人生遇此情景足矣，我暗想。在此度过周末足以，在此小住数月足以，在此安家足以。

6Later that night I loosed my hair from its braids and

combed it smooth -- not for myself, but so the village

girls could play with it in the morning.

夜半时分，我散开辫子，把头发梳理得平平整整--不是为我自己，而是为了村里那些姑娘早上可以玩我的头发。

7We had disembarked at the village that afternoon, and

I had slumped on some shaded steps, wishing I knew some

Spanish or some Quechua so I could speak with the ring of

little girls who were alternately staring at me and smiling

at their toes. I spoke anyway, and fooled with my hair,

which they were obviously dying to get their hands on, and

laughed, and soon they were all braiding my hair, all five

of them, all fifty fingers, all my hair, even my bangs. And

then they took it apart and did it again, laughing, and

teaching me Spanish nouns, and meeting my eyes and each

other's with open delight, while their small brothers in

blue jeans climbed down from the trees and began kicking a

volleyball around with one of the North American men.

我们是那天下午在这个小村上岸的，我垂着头坐在树阴下的踏级上，真希望自己会说几句西班牙语或盖丘亚语，好跟围成一圈的小女孩说说话，她们一会儿看看我，一会儿又低头看着自己的脚趾窃笑。我还是开口了，笑着抚弄自己的头发，她们显然也都非常想碰碰我的头发。没过一会儿，她们就给我编辫子了，她们5个人，50个手指，我是一头辫子，连留海也编成了辫子。她们拆了编，编了拆，一边笑一边教我西班牙语单词，望望我，又相互对望，个个喜形于色，她们那些穿着牛仔服的小弟弟们则纷纷下得树来，跟一个北美人踢排球玩耍。

8Now, as I combed my hair in the little tent, another

of the men, a free-lance writer from Manhattan, was talking

quietly. He was telling us the tale of his life, describing

his work in Hollywood, his apartment in Manhattan, his

house "It makes me wonder," he said, "what I'm

doing in a tent under a tree in the village of Pompeya, on

the Napo River, in the jungle of Ecuador." After a pause he

added, "It makes me wonder why I'm going back."

此刻，我在低矮的帐篷里梳理着头发，另一个北美人，一位来自曼哈顿的自由作家，正在轻声说话。他在向我们讲述他人生的故

事，讲述他在好莱坞的工作、在曼哈顿的公寓、在巴黎的家……

“我不由纳闷，”他说，“在厄瓜多尔的丛林里，在纳波河上，在蓬帕雅小村，在树下的帐篷里，自己在干什么。”他顿了顿，接着说：“我不由寻思，自己为什么要回去。”

9The point of going somewhere like the Napo River in

Ecuador is not to see the most spectacular anything. It is

simply to see what is there. We are here on the planet only

once, and might as well get a feel for the place. We might

as well get a feel for the fringes and hollows in which

life is lived, for the Amazon basin, which covers half a

continent, and for the life that -- there, like anywhere

else -- is always and necessarily lived in detail: on the

tributaries, in the riverside villages, sucking this

particular white-fleshed guava in this particular pattern

of shade.

去厄瓜多尔纳波河这种地方不是为了观赏什么世界奇观，而只是去看一看那里有些什么。人生在世，惟有一次，我们不妨去感受一下那个地方。我们不妨去感受一下有生命生活其间的远方水乡山谷，去感受覆盖了半个大陆的亚马逊河流域，去感受那样一种生活――在那里，一如在别的地方――那种必定总是琐碎的生活：在各条支流上，在临水的村落里，在有着独特形状的阴凉处吮吸着有白色浆果的独特的番石榴。

10 What is there is interesting. The Napo River itself

is wide and brown, opaque, and smeared with floating foam

and logs and branches from the jungle. Parrots in flocks

dart in and out of the light. Under the water in the river,

unseen, are anacondas -- which are reputed to take a few

village toddlers every year -- and water boas, crocodiles,

and sweet-meated fish.

那里的一切都趣味盎然。纳波河河面宽阔，河水混浊，呈褐黄色，浮沫以及丛林里来的木段和树枝翻浮其上。成群的鹦鹉忽而飞进树荫里，忽而飞入阳光里。水下潜伏着南美蟒蛇――据说每年都要吞吃几名村童――还有水蟒、鳄鱼，以及肉质鲜美的鱼类。

11Low water bares gray strips of sandbar on which the

natives build tiny palm-thatch shelters for overnight

fishing trips. You see these extraordinarily clean people

(who bathe twice a day in the river, and whose straight

black hair is always freshly washed) paddling down the

river in dugout canoes, hugging the banks.

水浅的地方露出灰茫茫的狭长沙洲，土著人在沙洲上为过夜的渔夫搭建了小小的棕榈茅舍。你能见到这些清洁得出奇的人（他们在河里一天沐浴两次，满头直挺的黑发更是刚刚洗过）在独木舟里紧贴着河岸荡桨。